


53 

1 



PRESERVATION OF THE WILD 
ANIMALS OF NORTH AMERICA 



^ 



By HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN 



^ 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE BOONE AND CROCKETT 
CLUB, WASHINGTON, JANUARY 23, 1904 




Merycodus osborni Matthew. 

From the Middle Miocene of Colorado. Discovered and described by 
Dr. W. D. Matthew. Mounted by Mr. Adam Hermann. 



PRESERVATION OF THE WILD 
ANIMALS OF NORTH AMERICA 



By HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN 



J- 



^ *^ ^ 5 ? 5 ^ 



Preservation of the Wild Animals of 
North America 

BY HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN. 

The National and Congressional movement for 
the preservation of the Sequoia in California 
represents a growth of Intelligent sentiment. It Is 
the same kind of sentiment which must be aroused, 
and aroused In time, to bring about Government 
legislation If we are to preserve our native ani- 
mals. That which principally appeals to us in the 
Sequoia Is Its antiquity as a race, and the fact that 
California Is Its last refuge. 

As a special and perhaps somewhat novel argu- 
ment for preservation, I wish to remind you of 
the great antiquity of our game animals, and the 
enormous period of time which It has taken nature 
to produce them. We must have legislation, and 
we must have It In time. I recall the story of the 
judge and jury who arrived In town and Inquired 
about the security of the prisoner, w^ho was known 
to be a desperate character; they were assured by 

3 



Preservation of the Wild 

the crowd that the prisoner was perfectly secure 
because he was safely hanging to a neighboring 
tree. If our preservative measures are not 
prompt, there will be no animals to legislate for. 

SENTIMENT AND SCIENCE. 

The sentiment which promises to save the 
Sequoia Is due to the spread of knowledge regard- 
ing this wonderful tree, largely through the efforts 
of the Division of Forestry. In the official chro- 
nology of the United States Geological Survey — 
which is no more nor less reliable than that of 
other geological surveys, because all are alike 
mere approximations to the truth — the Sequoia 
was a well developed race 10,000,000 of years 
ago. It became one of a large family. Including 
fourteen genera. The master genus — the Sequoia 
— alone Includes thirty extinct species. It was dis- 
tributed in past times through Canada, Alaska, 
Greenland, British Columbia, across Siberia, and 
down into southern Europe. The Ice Age, and 
perhaps competition with other trees more success- 
ful in seeding down, are responsible for the fact 
that there are now only two living species — the 
"red wood," or Sequoia sempervirens, and the 
giant, or Sequoia gigantea. The last refuge of 
the gigantea is in ten Isolated groves. In some of 

4 



Animals of North America 

which the tree is reproducing itself, while in others 
it has ceased to reproduce. 

In the year 1900 forty mills and logging com- 
panies were engaged in destroying these trees. 

All of us regard the destruction of the Parthe- 
non by the Turks as a great calamity; yet it would 
be possible, thanks to the laborious studies which 
have chiefly emanated from Germany, for modem 
architects to completely restore the Parthenon in 
its former grandeur; but it is far beyond the 
power of all the naturalists of the world to restore 
one of these Sequoias, which were large trees, over 
100 feet in height, spreading their leaves to the 
sun, before the Parthenon was even conceived by 
the architects and sculptors of Greece. 

LIFE OF THE SEQUOIA AND HISTORY OF THOUGHT. 

In 1900 ^YQ hundred of the very large trees still 
remained, the highest reaching from 320 to 325 
feet. Their height, however, appeals to us less 
than their extraordinary age, estimated by 
Hutchins at 3,600, or by John Muir, who prob- 
ably loves them more than any man living, at from 
4,000 to 5,000 years. According to the actual 
count of Muir of 4,000 rings, by a method which 
he has described to me, one of these trees was 
1,000 years old when Homer wrote the Iliad; 

5 



Preservation of the Wild 

1,500 years of age when Aristotle was fore- 
shadowing his evolution theory and writing his 
history of animals; 2,000 years of age when Christ 
walked upon the earth; nearly 4,000 years of age 
when the "Origin of Species" was written. Thus 
the life of one of these trees spanned the whole 
period before the birth of Aristotle (384 B. C.) 
and after the death of Darwin (A. D. 1882), the 
two greatest natural philosophers who have lived. 
These trees are the noblest living things upon 
earth. I can imagine that the American people 
are approaching a stage of general intelligence 
and enlightened love of nature in which they will 
look back upon the destruction of the Sequoia as a 
blot on the national escutcheon. 

VENERATION OF AGE. 

The veneration of age sentiment which should, 
and I believe actually does, appeal to the Ameri- 
can people when clearly presented to them even 
more strongly than the commercial sentiment, is 
roused in equal strength by an intelligent appre- 
ciation of the race longevity of the larger animals 
which our ancestors found here in profusion, and 
of which but a comparatively small number still 
survive. To the unthinking man a bison, a wapiti, 
a deer, a pronghorn antelope, is a matter of hide 

6 



Animals of North America 

and meat; to the real nature lover, the true sports- 
man, the scientific student, each of these types is 
a subject of intense admiration. From the 
mechanical standpoint they represent an architect- 
ure more elaborate than that of Westminster Ab- 
bey, and a history beside which human history is 
as of yesterday. 

SLOW EVOLUTION OF MODERN MAMMALS. 

These animals were not made in a day, nor in a 
thousand years, nor in a million years. As said 
the first Greek philosopher, Empedocles, who 560 
B. C. adumbrated the ^'survival of the fittest" 
theory of Darwin, they are the result of ceaseless 
trials of nature. While the Sequoia was first 
emerging from the Carboniferous, or Coal Period, 
the reptile-like ancestors of these mammals, cov- 
ered with scales and of egg-laying habits, were 
crawling about and giving not the most remote 
prophecy of their potential transformation through 
10,000,000 of years into the superb fauna of the 
northern hemisphere. 

The descendants of these reptiles were trans- 
formed into mammals. If we had had the oppor- 
tunity of studying the early mammals of the 
Rocky Mountain region with a full appreciation 
of the possibilities of evolution, we should have 

7 



Preservation of the Wild 

perceived that they were essentially of the same 
stock and ancestral to our modern types. There 
were little camels scarcely more than twelve inches 
high, little taller than cotton-tail rabbits and 
smaller than the jackass rabbits; horses 15 inches 
high, scarcely larger than, and very similar in 
build to, the little English coursing hound known 
as the whippet; it is not improbable that we shall 
find the miniature deer; there certainly existed 
ancestral wolves and foxes of similarly small pro- 
portions. You have all read your Darwin care- 
fully enough to know that neither camels, horses, 
nor deer would have evolved as they did except 
for the stimulus given to their limb and speed de- 
velopment by the contemporaneous evolution of 
their enemies in the dog family. 

THE MIDDLE STAGE OF EVOLUTION. 






A million and a half years later thcs( 
mals had attained a very considerable size; the 
western country had become transformed by the 
elevation of the plateaux into dry, grass-bearing 
uplands, where both horses and deer of peculiarly 
American types were grazing. We have recently 
secured some fresh light on the evolution of the 
American deer. Besides the Palaomeryx, which 
may be related to the true American deer Odocov- 

8 



'Animals of North America 

leus, we have found the complete skeleton of a 
small animal named Merycodus, nineteen inches 
high, possessed of a complete set of delicate 
antlers with the characteristic burr at the base indi- 
cating the annual shedding of the horn, and a gen- 
eral structure of skeleton which suggests our so- 
called pronghorn antelope, Antilocapra, rather 
than our true American deer, Odocoileus. This 
was in all probability a distinctively American 
type. Its remains have been found in eastern 
Colorado in the geological age known as Middle 
Miocene, which is estimated {sub rosa, like all 
our other geological estimates), at about a million 
and a half years of age. Our first thought as we 
study this small, strikingly graceful animal, is 
wonder that such a high degree of specialization 
and perfection was reached at so early a period; 
our second thought is the reverence for age 
sentiment. 

THE AFRICAN PERIOD IN AMERICA. 

The conditions of environment were different 
from what they were before or what they are now. 
These animals flourished during the period in 
which western America must have closely re- 
sembled the eastern and central portions of Africa 
at the present time. 

9 



Preservation of the Wild 

This inference is drawn from the fact that 
the predominant fauna of America in the Middle 
and Upper Miocene Age and in the Pliocene was 
closely analogous to the still extant fauna of 
Africa. It is true we had no real antelopes in this 
country, in fact none of the bovines, and no 
giraffes ; but there was a camel which my colleague 
Matthew has surnamed the "giraffe camel," extra- 
ordinarily similar to the giraffe. There were no 
hippopotami, no hyraces. All these peculiarly 
African animals, of African origin, I believe, 
found their way into Europe at least as far as the 
Sivalik Hills of India, but never across the Bering 
Sea Isthmus. The only truly African animal 
which reached America, and which flourished here 
in an extraordinary manner, was the elephant, or 
rather the mastodon, if we speak of the elephant 
in its Miocene stage of evolution. However, the 
resemblance between America and Africa is 
abundantly demonstrated by the presence of great 
herds of horses, of rhinoceroses, both long and 
short limbed, of camels in great variety, including 
the giraffe-like type which was capable of brows- 
ing on the higher branches of trees, of small ele- 
phants, and of deer, which in adaptation to some- 
what arid conditions imitated the antelopes in 
general structure. 

10 



Animals of North America 

ELIMINATION BY THE GLACIAL PERIOD. 

The Glacial Period eliminated half of this 
fauna, whereas the equatorial latitude of the fauna 
in Africa saved that fauna from the attack of the 
Glacial Period, which was so fatally destructive 
to the animals in the more northerly latitudes of 
America. The glaciers or at least the very low 
temperature of the period eliminated especially all 
the African aspects of our fauna. This destructive 
agency was almost as baneful and effective as the 
mythical Noah's flood. When it passed off, there 
survived comparatively few indigenous North 
American animals, but the country was repopu- 
lated from the entire northern hemisphere, so 
that the magnificent wild animals which our ances- 
tors found here were partly North American and 
partly Eurasiatic in origin. 

ELIMINATION BY MAN. 

Our animal fortune seemed to us so enormous 
that it never could be spent. Like a young rake 
coming into a very large inheritance, we attacked 
this noble fauna with characteristic American im- 
providence, and with a rapidity compared with 
which the Glacial advance was eternally slow; 
the East went first, and in fifty years we have 
brought about an elimination in the West which 

II 



Preservation of the Wild 

promises to be even more radical than that effected 
by the ice. We are now beginning to see the end 
of the North American fauna; and if we do not 
move promptly, it will become a matter of history 
and of museums. The bison is on the danger line ; 
if it survives the fatal effects of its natural slug- 
gishness when abundantly fed, it still runs the 
more insidious but equally great danger of in- 
breeding, like the wild ox of Europe. The 
chances for the wapiti and elk and the western mule 
and black-tail deer are brighter, provided that we 
move promptly for their protection. The prong- 
horn is a wonderfully clever and adaptive animal, 
crawling under barb-wire fences, and thus avoid- 
ing one of the greatest enemies of Western life. 
Last summer I was surprised beyond measure to 
see the large herds of twenty to forty pronghorn 
antelopes still surviving on the Laramie plains, 
fenced in on all sides by the wires of the great 
Four-Bar Ranch, part of which I believe are 
stretched illegally. 

RECENT DISAPPEARANCE. 

I need not dwell on the astonishingly rapid 
diminution of our larger animals In the last few 
years; it would be like "carrying coals to New* 
castle" to detail personal observations before this 

12 



Animals of North America 

Club, which is full of men of far greater expe- 
rience and knowledge than myself. On the White 
River Plateau Forest Reserve, which is destined 
to be the Adirondacks of Colorado, with which 
many of you are familiar, the deer disappeared in 
a period of four years. Comparatively few are 
left. 

The most thoroughly devastated country I 
know of is the Uintah Mountain Forest Reserve, 
which borders between southwestern Wyoming 
and northern Utah. I first went through this 
country in 1877. It was then a wild natural 
region ; even a comparatively few years ago it was 
bright with game, and a perfect flower garden. 
It has felt the full force of the sheep curse. I 
think any one of you who may visit this country 
now will agree that this is not too strong a term, 
and I want to speak of the sheep question from 
three standpoints : First, as of a great and legiti- 
mate industry in itself; second, from the economic 
standpoint; third, from the standpoint of wild 
animals. 

GENERAL RESULTS OF GRAZING. 

The formerly beautiful Uintah Mountain range 
presents a terrible example of the effects of pro^ 
longed sheep herding. The under foliage is en- 

13 



Preservation of the Wild 

tirely gone. The sheep annually eat off the grass 
tops and prevent seeding down; they trample out 
of life what they do not eat; along the principal 
valley routes even the sage brush is destroyed. 
Reforesting by the upgrowth of young trees is still 
going on to a limited extent, but is in danger. The 
water supply of the entire Bridger farming coun- 
try, which is dependent upon the Uintah Moun- 
tains as a natural reservoir, is rapidly diminishing; 
the water comes in tremendous floods in the spring, 
and begins to run short in the summer, when it is 
most needed. The consequent effects upon both 
fish and wild animals are well known to you. No 
other animal will feed after the sheep. It is no 
exaggeration to say, therefore, that the sheep in 
this region are the enemies of every living thing. 

BALANCE OF NATURE. 

Even the owner cannot much longer enjoy his 
range, because he is operating against the balance 
of nature. The last stage of destruction which 
these innocent animals bring about has not yet 
been reached, but it Is approaching; It is the stage 
in which there is no food left for the sheep them- 
selves. I do not know how many pounds of food 
a sheep consumes in course of a year — it cannot be 
much less than a ton — but say It is only half a ton, 

14 



Animals of North America 

how many acres of dry western mountain land are 
capable of producing half a ton a year when not 
seeding down? As long as the consumption ex- 
ceeds the production of the soil, it is only a ques- 
tion of time when even the sheep will no longer 
find subsistence. 

THE LAST STAGE TO BE SEEN IN THE ORIENT. 

While going through these mountains last sum- 
mer and reflecting upon the prodigious changes 
which the sheep have brought about in a few 
years, it occurred to me that we must look to 
Oriental countries in order to see the final results 
of sheep and goat grazing in semi-arid climates. 
I have proposed as an historical thesis a subject 
which at first appears somewhat humorous, 
namely, '*The Influence of Sheep and Goats in 
History." I am convinced that the country lying 
between Arabia and Mesopotamia, which was 
formerly densely populated, full of beautiful 
cities, and heavily wooded, has been transformed 
less by the action of political causes than by the 
unrestricted browsing of sheep and goats. This 
browsing destroyed first the undergrowth, then 
the forests, the natural reservoirs of the country, 
then the grasses which held together the soil, and 
finally resulted in the removal of the soil itself. 

IS 



Preservation of the Wild 

The country is now denuded of soil, the rocks are 
practically bare; it supports only a few lions, 
hyaenas, gazelles, and Bedouins. Even if the trade 
routes and mines, on which Brooks Adams in his 
"New Empire" dwells so strongly as factors of 
all civilization, were completely restored, the pop- 
ulation could not be restored nor the civilization, 
because there is nothing in this country for people 
to live upon. The same is true of North Africa, 
which, according to Gibbon, was once the granary 
of the Roman Empire. In Greece to-day the 
goats are now destroying the last vestiges of the 
forests. 

I venture the prediction that the sheep industry 
on naturally semi-arid lands is doomed; that the 
future feeding of both sheep and cattle will be on 
irrigated lands, and that the forests will be care- 
fully guarded by State and Nature as natural 
reservoirs. 

COMMERCIALISM AND IDEALISM. 

By contrast to the sheep question, which is a 
purely economic or utilitarian one, and will settle 
itself, if we do not settle it by legislation based on 
scientific observation, the preservation of the 
Sequoia and of our large wild animals is one of 
pure sentiment, of appreciation of the ideal side 

i6 



Animals of North America 

of life; we can live and make money without 
either. We cannot even use the argument which 
has been so forcibly used In the case of the birds, 
that the cutting down of these trees or killing of 
these animals will upset the balance of nature. 

I believe In every part of the country — East, 
West, North, and South — we Americans have 
reached a stage of civilization where If the matter 
were at issue the majority vote would unquestion- 
ably be, let us preserve our wild animals. 

We are generally considered a commercial peo- 
ple, and so we are ; but we are more than this, we 
are a people of ideas, and we value them. As 
stated in the preamble of the Sequoia bill intro^ 
duced on Dec. 8, 1903, we must legislate for the 
benefit and enjoyment of the people, and I may add 
for the greatest happiness of the largest number, 
not only of the present but of future generations. 

So far as my observation goes, preservation can 
only be absolutely insured by national legislation. 

GOVERNMENT LEGISLATION BY ENGLAND, 
BELGIUM, GERMANY. 

The English, a naturally law-abiding people, 
seem to have a special faculty for enforcing laws. 
By co-operation with the Belgian Government 
they have taken effective and remarkably success- 

17 



Preservation of the Wild 

ful measures for the protection of African game. 
As for Germany, in 1896 Mr. Gosselln, of the 
British Embassy in Berlin, reported as follows for 
German East Africa : 

That the question of preserving big game in 
German East Africa has been under the considera- 
tion of the local authorities for some time past, and 
a regulation has been notified at Dar-es-Salaam 
which it is hoped will do something toward check- 
ing the wanton destruction of elephants and other 
indigenous animals. Under this regulation every 
hunter must take out an animal license, for which the 
fee varies from 5 to 500 rupees, the former being the 
ordinary fee for natives, the latter for elephant and 
rhinoceros hunting, and for the members of sport- 
ing expeditions into the interior. Licenses are not 
needed for the purpose of obtaining food, nor for 
shooting game damaging cultivated land, nor for 
shooting apes, beasts of prey, wild boars, reptiles, 
and all birds except ostriches and cranes. Whatever 
the circumstances, the shooting is prohibited of all 
young game — calves, foals, young elephants, either 
tuskless or having tusks under three kilos, all female 
game if recognizable — except, of course, those in 
the above category of unprotected animals. Further, 
in the Moschi district of Kilima-Njaro, no one, 
whether possessing a license or not, is allowed with- 
out the special permission of the Governor to shoot 
antelopes, giraffes, buffaloes, ostriches, and cranes. 
Further, special permission must be obtained to hunt 

18 



Animals of North America 

these with nets, by kindling fires, or by big drives. 
Those who are not natives have also to pay loo 
rupees for the first elephant killed, and 250 for each 
additional one, and 50 rupees for the first rhinoceros 
and 150 for each succeeding one. Special game pre- 
serves are also to be established, and Major von 
Wissmann, in a circular to the local officers, explains 
that no shooting whatever will be allowed in these 
without special permission from the Government. 
The reserves will be of interest to science as a means 
of preserving from extirpation the rarer species, and 
the Governor calls for suggestions as to the best 
places for them. They are to extend in each direc- 
tion at least ten hours' journey on foot. He further 
asks for suggestions as to hippopotamus reserves, 
where injury would not be done to plantations. Two 
districts are already notified as game sanctuaries. 
Major von Wissmann further suggests that the 
station authorities should endeavor to domesticate 
zebras (especially when crossed with muscat and 
other asses and horses), ostriches, and hyaena dogs 
crossed with European breeds. Mr. Gosselin 
remarks that the best means of preventing the 
extermination of elephants would be to fix by inter- 
national agreement among all the Powers on the East 
African coast a close time for elephants, and to 
render illegal the exportation or sale of tusks under 
a certain age. 

In December, 1900, Viscount Cranborne In the 
House of Commons reported as follows: 

19 



Preservation of the Wild 

* * * That regulations for the preservation of 
wild animals have been in force for some time in 
the several African Protectorates administered by 
the Foreign Office as v^ell as in the Sudan. The 
obligations imposed by the recent London Con- 
vention upon the signatory Powers will not become 
operative until after the exchange of ratifications, 
which has not yet taken place. In anticipation, how- 
ever, steps have been taken to revise the existing 
regulations in the British Protectorates so as to bring 
them into strict harmony with the terms of the con- 
vention. The game reserves now existing in the 
several Protectorates are: In (a) British Central 
Africa, the elephant marsh reserve and the Shirwa 
reserve; in (b) the East Africa Protectorate, the 
Kenia District; in (c) Uganda, the Sugota game 
reserve in the northeast of the Protectorate; in (d) 
SomaHland, a large district defined by an elaborate 
boundary line described in the regulations. The 
regulations have the force of law in the Protectorates, 
and offenders are dealt with in the Protectorate 
Courts. It is in contemplation to charge special 
officers of the Administrations with the duty of watch- 
ing over the proper observance of the regulations. 
Under the East African game regulations only the 
officers permanently stationed at or near the Kenia 
reserve may be specially authorized to kill game in 
the reserve. 

Other effective measures have been taken in the 
Soudan district. Capt. Stanley Flower, Director 

20 



Animals of North America 

of the Gizeh Zoological Gardens, made a very full 
report, which is quoted in Nature for July 25, 
1901, p. 318. 

STATE LAWS. 

The preservation of even a few of our wild 
animals is a very large proposition ; it is an under- 
taking the difficulty of which grows in magnitude 
as one comes to study it in detail and gets on the 
ground. The rapidly increasing legislation in the 
Western States is an indication of rapidly growing 
sentiment. A still more encouraging sign is the 
strong sympathy with the enforcement of the laws 
which we find around the National Park in 
Wyoming and Montana especially. State laws 
should be encouraged, but I am convinced that 
while effective in the East, they will not be effect- 
ive in the West in time, because of the scattered 
population, the greater areas of country involved, 
the greater difficulty of watching and controlling 
the killing, and the actual need of game for food 
by settlers. 

When we study the operation of our State laws 
on the ground we find that for various reasons 
they are not fully effective. A steady and in some 
cases rapid diminution of animals is going on so 
far as I have observed in Colorado and Wyoming; 

21 



Preservation of the Wild 

either the wardens strictly enforce the laws with 
strangers and wink at the breaking of them by 
residents, or they draw their salaries and do not 
enforce the laws at all.* 

THE VARIOUS CAUSES OF ELIMINATION. 

The enemies of our wild animals are numerous 
and constantly increasing. ( i ) There is first the 
general advance of what we call civilization, the 
fencing up of country which principally cuts off 
the winter feeding grounds. This was especially 

*Addendum. — There is no question as to the good intention 
of State legislation. The chief difficulty in the enforcement 
of the law is that officers appointed locally, and partly from 
political reasons, shrink from applying the penalties of the law 
to their own friends and neighbors, especially where the ani- 
mals are apparently abundant and are sought for food. The 
honest enforcement of the law renders the officer unpopular, 
even if it does not expose him to personal danger. He is 
regarded as interfering with long established rights and cus- 
toms. The above applies to conscientious officers. Many local 
game wardens, as in the Colorado White River Plateau, for 
example, give absolutely no attention to their duties, and arc 
not even on the ground at the opening of the season. In the 
Plateau in August, 1901, the laws were being openly and 
flagrantly violated, not only by visitors, but by residents. At 
the same time the National forest laws were being most 
strictly and intelligently enforced. There is no question what- 
ever that the people of various States can be brought to 
understand that National aid or co-operation in the protection 
of certain wild areas is as advantageous to a locality as 
National irrigation and National forest protection. It is to 
be sought as a boon and not as an infringement. 

L. Of C 



Animals of North America 

seen in the country south of the National Park last 
winter. ( 2 ) The destruction of natural browsing 
areas by cattle and sheep, and by fire. (3) The 
destruction ' of game by sportsmen plays a com- 
paratively small part in the total process of elim- 
ination, yet in some cases it is very reckless, 
and especially bad in its example. When I first 
rode into the best shooting country of Colorado 
in 1 90 1, there was a veritable cannonading going 
on, which reminded me of the accounts of the bat- 
tle of El Caney. The destruction effected by one 
party in three days was tremendous. In riding 
over the ground — for I was not myself shooting — 
I was constantly coming across the carcasses of 
deer. (4) The summer and winter killing for 
food; this is the principal and in a sense the most 
natural and legitimate cause, although it is largely 
illegal. In this same area, which was more or less 
characteristic and typical of the other areas, even 
of the conditions surrounding the national reserve 
in the Big Horn region, the destruction was, and 
is, going on principally during the winter when the 
deer are seeking the winter ranges and when they 
are actually shot and carted away in large numbers 
for food both for the ranchmen and for neighbor- 
ing towns. Making all allowances for exaggera- 
tion,. I believe it to be absolutely true that these 

23 



Preservation of the Wild 

deer were being killed by the wagonloadi The 
same is true of the pronghorn antelope in the 
Laramie Plains district. The most forceful argu- 
ment against this form of destruction is that it is 
extremely short-lived and benefits comparatively 
few people. This argument is now enforced by 
law and by public sentiment in Maine and New 
York, where the wild animals, both deer and 
moose, are actually increasing in number. 

Granted, therefore, that we have both National 
and State sentiment, and that National legislation 
by co-operation with the States, if properly under- 
stood, would receive popular support, the carrying 
out of this legislation and making it fully effective 
will be a difficult matter. 

It can be done, and, in my judgment, by two 
measures. The first is entirely familiar to you : 
certain or all of the forest reserves must be made 
animal preserves; the forest rangers must be made 
game wardens, or special wardens must be ap- 
pointed. This is not so difficult, because the 
necessary machinery is already at hand, and only 
requires adaptation to this new purpose. It can 
probably be carried through by patience and good 
judgment. Second, the matter of the preservation 
of the winter supply of food and protection of ani- 
mals while enjoying this supply is the most difficult 

24 



Animals of North America 

part of the whole problem, because it Involves the 
acquisition of land which has already been taken 
up by settlers and which Is not covered by the 
present forest reserve machinery, and which I fear 
in many instances will require new legislation. 

Animals can change their habits during the 
summer, and have already done so; the wapiti, 
buffalo, and even the pronghorn have totally 
changed their normal ranges to avoid their new 
enemy ; but in winter they are forced by the heavy 
snows and by hunger right down into the enemy's 
country. 

Thus we not only have the problem of making 
game preserves out of our forest reserves, but we 
have the additional problem of enlarging the area 
of forest reserves so as to provide for winter feed- 
ing. If this Is not done all the protection which 
Is afforded during the summer will be wholly 
futile. This condition does not prevail In the 
East, In Maine and In the Adirondacks, where 
the winter and summer ranges are practically 
similar. It Is, therefore a new condition and a 
new problem. 

Greater difficulties have been overcome, how- 
ever, and I have no doubt that the members 
of this Club will be among the leaders In 
the movement. The whole country now applauds 

?5 



Preservation of the Wild 

the development and preservation of the Yellow- 
stone Park, which we owe largely to the initiative 
of Phillips, Grinnell, and Rogers. Grant and La 
Farge were pioneers in the New York Zoological 
Park movement. We know the work of Merriam 
and Wadsworth, and we always know the sympa- 
thies of our honored founder, member, and guest 
of this evening, Theodore Roosevelt. 

What the Club can do is to spread information 
and thoroughly enlighten the people, who always 
act rightly when they understand. 

It must not be put on the minutes of the his- 
tory of America, a country which boasts of Its 
popular education, that the Sequoia, a race 
10,000,000 years old, sought its last refuge in the 
United States, with individual trees older than the 
entire history and civilization of Greece, that an 
appeal to the American people was unavailing, 
that the finest grove was cut up for lumber, 
fencing, shingles, and boxes! It must not be 
recorded that races of animals representing stocks 
3,000,000 years of age, mostly developed on the 
American continent, were eliminated in the course 
of fifty years for hides and for food in a country 
abounding In sheep and cattle. 

The total national investment In animal preser- 
vation will be less than the cost of a single battle- 

26 



'Animals of North America 

ship. The end result will be that a hundred years 
hence our descendants will be enjoying and bless- 
ing us for the trees and animals, while, in the other 
case, there will be no vestige of the battleship, be- 
cause it will be entirely out of date in the warfare 
of the future. 



27 



